


IBDC: Incredible Love

by moonstalker24



Series: The Itty Bitty Ditty Committee [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: A little, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Minor Jane Foster/Thor, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, The Winter Soldier Figures Out Feelings, Whiteboard Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6470155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstalker24/pseuds/moonstalker24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy is born with a large red star on her right shoulder. It doesn't vanish like most soulmate marks do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	IBDC: Incredible Love

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is part of my IBDC series. However, seeing as it's 4933 words long, I had to post it on it's own. Because of reasons. And feelings. So for those who don't know, there is [this post](http://moonstalker24.tumblr.com/post/140731966277/frozenmusings-diminuendodaydreams) over on tumblr that is just amazing. I wrote a IBDC drabble for it for [Darcy/Steve](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4015399/chapters/14254057) that turned out amazing. I couldn't not write more, and I see more of this style of soulmate in my future.

**Incredible Love**

(ducky, whiteboard soulmates, [ incredible love - ingrid michaelson ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K289q5gQAgA))

 

_“I’ll say goodbye again tonight_

_The third time’s the charmer they say_

_Your words are inked on my skin_

_The marks of incredible love…”_

 

Darcy is born with a large red star on her left shoulder. It’s not unusual for a child to be born with marks on their skin if their soulmate is older. By the uniformity of the star, her parents believe that her soulmate must be old enough to have just gotten a tattoo. Logically they think that given the standard four to six weeks healing time, the mark will fade like tattoos usually do.

It doesn’t.

Elizabeth grows worried. Her baby girl is two months old and there must be something wrong with her bond. Richard lets her fret, lets her worry for both of them. His belief is that it will all sort itself out, the universe knows what it’s doing. There’s no way their daughter could have received a broken bond. Elizabeth believes that the universe has a lot to do, and sometimes some things slip through the cracks, so they consult the experts.

The next six months of Darcy Lewis’ life is round after round of doctor visits. Doctors who refer them to other doctors. Doctors who refer them to soulmate specialists. Specialists who refer them to this, that, or the other of their colleagues. Exams, tests, chanting even. Baby Darcy starts to teethe and everyone comes to the same conclusion:

There is nothing to conclude.

As far as anyone can tell, Darcy’s bond with her soulmate is perfectly functional. The star on her arm must have been a side effect to a trauma her soulmate had experienced shortly after getting the tattoo. This, they say, also evidenced by the fact that soulpen and markers just wipe right off her left arm. Only the strongest of long lasting soulmarkers will stay on it, and even then only for a fraction of the time they should.

Whoever Darcy’s soulmate is, they must have gotten the tattoo and then experienced a severe trauma which decreased nerve sensitivity in their left arm significantly.

The experts are only vaguely right, but it is enough to reassure Darcy’s parents that everything is okay. Darcy’s bond (and her soulmate) are just fine.

Darcy doesn’t care one way or the other, she’s too busy figuring out this walking business.

*

The Winter Soldier does not know what the marks he finds on his skin mean, but he knows they are important. He cannot let the handlers know they are there. If they find out, they will take the marks away from him. He cannot let them do that. The marks are important. He needs them. He does not know why.

He will not let the marks be another thing they take from him.

*

Darcy is right handed. This is a travesty in her opinion, because nothing _stays_ on her left arm except heavy duty soulmarkers that cost fifteen dollars each. She knows that’s a lot, and Mommy says she’s got the rest of her body to write on, so they only buy soulpens. Darcy decides she’s going to be left handed after that conversation.

It’s slow going, but one broken arm when she’s nine, and eight weeks in a cast with no other choice later, and she’s well on her way to ambidextrous.

The ability only gets better with time and practice.

Her soulmate never writes her back. Her friends make fun of her for it. Her parents sit her down and explain that there is nothing wrong with her soulmate. Whoever they are, they were hurt very badly around the time that Darcy was born. Her parents explain that her soulmate could still be healing. That sometimes it can take a very long time to get better.

Darcy concludes that her soulmate _can’t_ write her back. Not yet; and that’s okay. She writes enough for both of them. She can wait.

Also, she goes and gets herself new friends, because who wants to be friends with people who make fun?

*

The Winter Soldier concludes that the marks are messages the third time he comes out of cryo and finds them. They are the same, but different. They are messages from someone who is far away from him. This is good. Far away means that they are safe from the handlers. It is his duty to protect the message sender. They are young and innocent, and they love him.

He does not know what love is.

He looks it up once, but he knows the meaning of the word will be taken away from him when he returns to the handlers. Instead he equates love with the messages, with the one who writes them, and with the warm feeling he gets in his chest when he sees the messages.

They can take the meaning of the word from him, but they cannot take away the meaning of the associated feelings.

*

The first time Darcy receives a message from her soulmate, she’s fifteen. She notices it on the bus to school. It’s a single line of text, written in a uniform, blocky script that screams male to her. Whatever language it’s in, it isn’t english, so Darcy can’t read it. None of her friends can either, but it’s fun to try and figure it out anyway.

“It’s cyrillic,” Ms. Ridley informs her after english class when she asks. “It’s the written form of slavic languages, in this case Russian.”

“Can you read it?” Darcy asks her.

Ms. Ridley smiles at her and Darcy knew she liked her for a reason. Her teacher takes her arm gently and studies the text for a bit, then she turns and digs a battered Russian-English dictionary out of her desk.

“Let’s find out,” she says.

It takes all of Darcy’s lunch break to translate the words. It’s worth it. Darcy walks out of the classroom with a smile on her face and a scrap of paper in her hand. She has a new goal: she’s going to learn Russian.

When she gets home, she uses packing tape to laminate the paper so that the words will be with her forever, even after they fade from her arm two days later. Her parents are happy to buy her the books she needs. They’re so happy that she’s finally gotten a response that they agree to let her sign up for a language class at the community college.

She uses the laminated words as a bookmark, and they remind her why she’s doing this whenever she gets frustrated.

_You are my heart._

*

There is something. Something he must remember. He is cold. He is tired. He sleeps.

*

Darcy likes to cuss in Russian. She also likes to coo sweet nothings at the machines when she’s trying to get them to work properly. Jane finds it amusing once she gets past her initial surprise. It gives them something to bond over. Having soulmates with a language barrier between them. Darcy is lucky, at least Russian is a known language that she’s been able to learn. Jane isn’t so lucky, there’s nothing in the world that quite matches the rune-like language her soulmate uses.

They’ve been reduced to crude stick figure communication. Neither Jane or her soulmate have a single artistic bone in their bodies. Bless them.

It’s Darcy that first postulates that maybe Jane’s soulmate is and alien? It’s not until after she tases Thor and a matching bruise appears on Jane’s upper arm that the theory is proven right. They stare at each other with wide eyes while Eric tries to get the giant blond hunk into the van.

“I was joking!” Darcy exclaims, wide-eyed.

Jane stares at her intern (read: best friend), “You were right!”

(They argue about whether or not he’s really an alien up until he proves that he is.)

After Thor swears to come back and vanishes up the rainbow bridge, Darcy and Jane pinky swear to stick together. For survival. If Darcy was right about Jane’s soulmate being an alien, they’re not taking any chances. After all, she did make a joke about her own soulmate being a Russian spy when Jane first caught her speaking Russian to her telescope.

Darcy, naturally, tells her soulmate all of this. She always tells him everything. She even goes as far as to break out the heavy duty soulmarkers (fifteen bucks a pop, guaranteed to last seven days) so that she can draw a flying saucer (complete with little green aliens) on her left arm.

It lasts a record of seven hours.

*

They wake the Winter Soldier, just in case. If it is necessary, they will send him to do what Fury’s rag tag team cannot. He waits. He sits in a room, waiting. He waits for two days. It is long enough to find and read all of the messages currently on his skin. All of them in beautifully penned cyrillic this time instead of english.

The message sender has learned cyrillic. For him.

The warm feeling in his chest increases.

He will break the chains of his masters, he decides. He will burn them down to keep his messenger, his heart, safe from them. The longer he waits, the more likely the chances of the messages discovery becomes. He must not let that happen.

Mission: Protect his heart.

Parameters: Destroy Hydra.

Mission: Accepted.

*

The day the sky above New York opens and aliens attack, Darcy finds a single line of text written across the bottom of her left foot:

_I have hope._

*

London is a surreal, hysterical (the funny-but-not-funny kind), terrifying experience. There are missing shoes, missing keys, missing astrophysicists. Thor comes back. Jane comes back. Thor and Jane leave again, this time together. All in quick succession, nearly too fast to keep up with.

Darcy, Eric and Intern Ian eat pizza in the car while they wait. Intern Ian snores, and eggs are not good cold. A reminder Darcy didn’t need, and now regrets.

Odin, King of Asgard, calls Jane a goat.

They save the world from terrifying space elves.

Go Team Science!

Thor comes to stay, and while Darcy is happy for her stick figure soulmate buddies, she really wishes Thor wouldn’t leave mjolnir lying around. The first time she trips over it she curses loudly, and emphatically, in Russian when she collides with the corner of the coffee table. After that she decides to treat the hammer like she does Jane’s machines. Meaning: she talks to it sweetly in Russian and tries to move it.

One day she will succeed, she knows it.

When Tony Stark makes an employment offer to Jane (endless budget, and she retains ownership and control of all her research) they know he’s doing it mostly so that Thor will come back to New York. They move to New York anyway, because unlimited budget. Darcy tells her soulmate where she is, she always does: _Moving to New York this time. Gonna spit off the top of the Empire State Building and eat all the food. All of it._

It doesn’t take much to get Darcy to take the Science Bros under her wing. They’re like Jane; when Science! is in sight, they forget to feed and water themselves. Bruce is better at self-management than the rest, but only marginally. Tony is the worst.

Darcy babies the bots the same way she does Jane’s machines. She sweet talks them in Russian and soon has a trio of eager-to-please robots wandering after her. Jarvis doesn’t need to be sweet talked into helping her wrangle the scientists three (sometimes four, when Eric visits), but he doesn’t mind when she calls him her bright star in Russian.

Natasha thinks it’s utterly hilarious that Darcy has somehow trained everyone in the labs to respond to certain words or phrases with a pavlovian response. She learns from Jane that Darcy’s soulmate is Russian, and it explains everything.

She never does see the red star on Darcy’s shoulder before she and Steve leave for D.C.

*

He will have to neutralize the Target before he can enact his plan. The Target thinks that he is someone called ‘Bucky’. He does not know who Bucky is, but he does know that the Target will not let him go. The Winter Soldier cannot be followed to his heart. He will not put his heart in danger.

It is decided. He will deal with Peirce, and then he will deal with the Target.

The Target becomes the Captain. He knows him. How does he know him? He asks, risks another wiping to deflect from the messages. He will not be compromised. He has a mission.

Pierce dies. He kills him himself, even though it puts him in the Captain’s sights. The Captain is determined to get ‘Bucky’ back. Who the hell is Bucky?

He finds the message when he pulls the Captain ( _'Steve’_ his mind whispers) out of the river. It is scrawled hastily on the back of his forearm. It is in english, and somehow the words look worried. He was unaware that words could look worried.

_Are you okay?_

His heart knows he is here. He has seen the cameras, knows he was on the news. His heart was probably watching. She will not know if he is alive. He must respond. And then he must find out who ‘Bucky’ is.

He leaves the Captain on the riverbank.

*

_Yes._

The tight knot in Darcy’s chest lessens at the word. He’s okay. Or, at least, he’s alive. She breathes out shakily against Jane, who is watching the news coverage of the D.C. disaster with her. She uncaps the soulpen in her hand with her teeth and scrawls _Good_ below his response.

She isn’t expecting a response, so when she gets one nearly instantly she’d have fallen over in shock if she wasn’t already sitting down.

_Cannot return to heart. Unsafe._

She’s his heart. He called her that when she was fifteen. She knows he’s talking about Hydra, and how they’d use her to get their asset back. He might also mean that he’s not safe. He’s probably breaking his programming. Who knows what they’ve done to him? He mind swirls with the possibilities. She writes: _Understood. Be safe._

She can’t tell him to come home to her. They’ve never actually met, and there’s no guarantee they ever will. He’s going after Hydra, and she’s not going to try and stop him.

When he asks her _Who the hell is Bucky?_ she doesn’t know, but she’s going to find out.

*

He stares at the face in the pictures all over the exhibit. It’s his face. But that man is smiling. It tells him the man was a hero. He is not a hero. He is an asset. Assets cannot be heroes. Can they?

Assets cannot have names. He has a name. James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky to his friends. (What are friends?)

Maybe, if he can have a name, then he can be a hero too? Maybe he can be her hero.

He walks away. He has a mission. He must protect his heart.

*

As soon as Darcy and Jarvis have figured out just who the Winter Soldier is, he’s booking her a ticket to D.C. Jane packs her a bag and Tony gives her an upgraded taser, just in case. She needs to get there before Steve goes haring off after his best friend.

James won’t be found until he’s burned enough of Hydra to feel like he won’t bring them to Darcy’s doorstep.

She fidgets her way through the hour long flight. Going through what Jarvis has managed to parse out of the Shield data dump. He’s targeting a long list of search parameters to try and contain the information that would expose Tony or any of the Avengers. He’s given her everything on herself, Jane and Jane’s research, and everything he’s been able to find out about her soulmate.

Her soulmate. Who is a ninety-five year old super assassin who’s spent the majority of the last seventy-five years being put on ice for extended periods of time. Her soulmate, whose left arm is a mechanical engineer’s wet dream. She cradles the place where her own star is on her arm. No wonder things won’t stay on that arm.

His is made of metal.

She doesn’t call him Bucky, she calls him James. She doesn’t want to be the one to open up the can of worms that is his life before falling from the train. She asks him to check in every now and then, so that she knows he’s okay. His _I will_ is short, but clear and precise. She knows he will.

She takes a cab directly to the hospital that Steve is in. She blusters her way past the nurses station, and calls Tony when she can’t get onto his floor. She blows down the hall and into the room, making the adorable guy sitting next to Steve jump in surprise.

“Get back in bed, Steven Grant Rogers,” she yells.

Steve, who had somehow talked Sam into helping out of the hospital bed, stares at Darcy. Her hair is wild and she’s glaring at him like his mother used to when he did something stupid. “Darcy, what are you doing here?” he demands.

She’s across the room in seconds and pressing Steve back into bed. Sam gamely helps her, because he wasn’t all that excited to walk Captain America out of a hospital AMA anyway. She crosses her arms over her chest and just, stares at him.

“What?” he asks, shifting uncomfortably and wincing.

“You’re an idiot,” she says flatly.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You’re going to stay in that bed and get better. And when you’re better, you and your pretty friend are coming back to New York, not running after him.” Sam grins at being called pretty, so she winks at him. Steve opens his mouth to protest, so she continues, “Do you really think you’re going to find him if he doesn’t want to be found?”

Steve’s mouth dips into his patented stubborn expression, “I’m not leaving him out there.”

“He won’t let you bring him in,” she tells him. Then she sighs and sits on the edge of the bed. “Let him do what he needs to do.”

“What does he need to do?” Steve asks, wondering how Darcy could possibly have any idea what Bucky needs to do.

Darcy takes off her cardigan and rolls up the left sleeve of her shirt. She turns to show Steve her star, and he inhales sharply. Then she offers him her right arm where several lines of neat cyrillic adorn her arm. Steve takes the arm, eyes wide.

“How?” He asks softly.

“The universe works in mysterious ways,” Darcy tells him gently. “He calls me his heart. He needs to protect me.”

“He’s going after Hydra,” Sam says, getting what she’s saying.

Darcy nods in agreement, “He’s promised to check in with me when he can.”

Steve sags back, but doesn’t let go of Darcy’s arm. Doesn’t let go of the evidence that he can get his best friend back. “I can’t leave him out there alone, Darcy.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you not to look for him,” she determinedly meets his gaze, “I’m asking you to help him.”

“You want us to take on Hydra too,” Sam gets it just a fraction faster than Steve, but only because he’s not the one brimming full of emotional turmoil.

Darcy nods again, “If you attack on one front, and he the other, he’ll come home to me sooner. I want him with me, so I want you to go out there and do what you can to get him to come in on his own.”

A slow grin starts across Steve’s face. Destroy Hydra? Absolutely. “I can do that.”

*

_He won’t be coming after you. He’ll attack Hydra from this side._

James knows that she means the Captain ( _Steve_ ). That she knows him is concerning. It makes her a target. Not as big a target as she is as his heart, but a target. He is relearning things. The longer is his out of cryo, the more he remembers. He remembers what love means, but prefers what he associates with the emotion. He remembers a punk of a guy, tiny, but full of fight.

He remembers about soulmates. He remembers that he didn’t have one. Not before.

He presses two fingers into the words on his wrist. _I’m Darcy_ they tell him. His heart has a name. She tells him things. A lot of things. Most of it means nothing to him save that she finds it important enough to tell him. He doesn’t know Jane, or Tony, or Bruce. He knows Steve. Knows that Sam is the man with the wings. He doesn’t know Jarvis, or Doctor Who.

She draws things sometimes. Always on his left arm. On the weapon Hydra attached to where his arm was. The metal whirs and clicks as the servos perform their duties. He thinks he hates his arm. He doesn’t hate it when she draws on it. There is a small yellow bear in a red shirt flying a blue kite on his forearm.

It makes him hate it less.

She tells him where Steve and Sam are going next. He appreciates the destruction they leave in their wake, especially when the rest of Steve’s team is with them (the Avengers). He leaves those targets alone. Takes out the ones they miss, the ones he _needs_ to take out. He kills every man that had anything to do with the chair, with the cryo, with his arm.

He tells her that he is okay once a week.

*

Darcy gets back into her routine. She wrangles scientists and plays with robots. The big difference to her routine is that now Captain America is one of the people she talks to the most. Steve latches onto her at first because she is his only source of information on Bucky, and then they get to know each other.

He’s one of her best friends.

He checks in every couple of days. When he’s in the New York, he appears in the lab and takes her to lunch. He shares stories about Bucky from before, and Darcy tells him about what he’s doing now. Steve thinks it’s both tragic and adorable that his best friend calls his soulmate his heart.

It’s nice that Bucky has Darcy. That he came out of all this time with a soulmate.

Like Steve has Sam. Who writes grocery lists on his arm because he knows Steve will do the shopping that way. Darcy thinks it’s hilarious. Steve’s a giant, badass superhero, with equally gigantic heart eyes. She takes Steve’s arm in her hands and scrawls the meme across his arm and signs it with a flourish.

Sam is still laughing when they get back to the tower.

Steve is still blushing because he’s got the word ‘motherfucker’ on his arm in giant letters now.

The other big change is that James is out there. Her soulmate is out there and she knows he’s getting her messages. Sometimes, late at night, he writes more than just that he’s okay. Sometimes she gets things like: _I missed sunsets_ and _What the hell is with bananas?_ and _What is a meme and is it contagious?_

He’s such a smartass. She loves him even more.

She dreams of the day when she’ll wake up and he’ll be lying next to her.

*

He counts. One hundred days. Two hundred. Five hundred and thirty eight days pass before he finally feels like he’s made safe his heart. Every instrument used on him, to create him is destroyed. Every person than had anything to do with it is dead and gone. Every iota of data on his creation (on how to do it again) is obliterated.

He can return to his heart now.

He packs away his armor. Wears jeans and a long sleeved shirt. Cuts his hair. Spends five hundred dollars (ill gotten, but Hydra doesn’t need it) on a dusty toyota corolla approximately ten years old and starts to drive. He’s in northern Idaho when he begins.

 _Inbound_ is scrawled on his arm.

He is ready.

*

_Inbound._

Inbound. He’s inbound. He’s coming home. Darcy can’t speak, so when Jane asks if she’s okay, she just waves her arm around in the air until Jane catches it to look at the word. It’s in english for the first time, so Jane can read it.

“He’s coming in?” she asks, making Darcy nod. Jane grins and hugs her.

“I- I need to tell Steve!” Darcy finally manages to get out. Then a thought strikes her: “Oh my god, I haven’t cleaned my apartment in a month!”

Jane laughs at her and offers to help. They shut down the lab and Jane guides Darcy toward the elevator as she babbles at Jarvis about how he needs to let James into the tower when he gets here. She does this while she texts Steve a picture of the word on her arm.

She’s going to float away, she can tell.

Jane keeps her in place and reminds her that it will probably be a couple of days before he arrives. Darcy doesn’t care. Her soulmate. Is coming here. To where she is. Finally. She’s been sitting on her hands for a year and a half, waiting with what she feels is an extreme amount of patience.

“I need ice cream,” she decides eventually, “and pizza.”

“Jarvis?” Jane asks sweetly, “Would you place an order for us?”

“Certainly,” Jarvis tells her.

“He’s coming home,” Darcy says, eyes starry.

“I know,” Jane tells her.

Steve is waiting for them at the door to Darcy’s apartment. He’s bouncing on his toes and Sam is watching him with an amused expression. The second she spots him, Darcy dashes down the hall and throws herself at him.

“He's coming home!” she tells him, cradling his face in her hands and trusting him not to drop her.

Steve grins, “Yes he is.”

*

It takes two and a half days to get to New York. He abandons the toyota several blocks from the Tower and walks. The moment he steps into the lobby he’s holding his breath. He expects security to just up and start yelling. But he is not in his armor, and he has cut his hair.

He makes it to the elevator, which opens before he can push the button.

Jarvis introduces himself as the doors slide shut behind him. He knows Jarvis, Darcy talks about Jarvis. His shoulders relax.

“I have taken the liberty of alerting Miss Lewis as to your arrival,” Jarvis tells him politely.

James doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods once. He’s grateful.

*

“Miss Lewis,” Jarvis says, making Darcy jump and flail. Jane’s notes scatter. “Mr Barnes has arrived.”

Wait. What? “He’s here?!” she asks loudly. “Where?”

“He is in the elevator. I am taking him up to the common level.”

Darcy jumps out of her chair so quickly it careens across the lab until a table blocks its path. The impact sends it crashing onto its side. Darcy barely notices, she’s already running for the Avengers only elevator. Jarvis opens the doors for her and she puts her hands on her knees, panting, “Get me up there, J. Fast.”

He does.

The elevator opens on the common level to a sight she’s wanted for a long time. James Barnes is standing stiffly by the two low steps that lead into the living area. He’s having a staring contest with Steve, who looks like he’s barely containing himself in order to remain stationary.

“Darcy!” Sam calls cheerfully, ignoring the tension in the room.

Darcy doesn’t reply, she doesn’t even stop moving. James turns just in time to catch her as she flings herself at him. She doesn’t think that it might be a bad idea until she’s already in the air, and by then it’s too late.

“You’re here,” she mutters into his chest.

His arms come up around her. She can vaguely feel the difference between flesh and metal, she doesn’t care. He’s here. He’s solid and real and here. She closes her eyes and tucks herself in as close as she can get. This is her soulmate. Hers.

He lowers his head to breathe in the scent of her shampoo. It’s light and floral and she feels so damn good. He glances up at Steve, more Bucky in him now than ever. Steve is grinning at him in that way he does that says he’s happy for him, but that he’d also kind of like to punch him.

“Punk,” James mutters at the other man.

If anything, Steve’s grin gets wider, “Jerk.”

James turns his attention to the woman in his arms. He does the thing that feels the most natural. He presses several kisses into the crown of her head, murmuring: “Мое сердце” into her hair as he does. His grip tightens on her. He can feel her squeeze him back. “Мое сердце.”

Darcy sighs. Her heart is thudding in her ears, and she’s the happiest she’s been in a long time. This moment has been a long time in coming, and she has no intention of letting it go. He continues to mutter “My heart,” into her ear. Her own feels ten sizes too big for her chest.

He’s finally here.

Finally.

**Author's Note:**

> According to Google Translate "Мое сердце" means "My heart".  
> Bonus points for you if you got the A.A. Milne reference.


End file.
